#1593 – Doctor Wednesdays: Knock Knock

The Doctor was back again this week with another creepy adventure. I love how Doctor Who can go from a space adventure one week, a period piece the next week and a horror movie the following week. Part of Doctor Who’s longevity rests in its ability to tell different stories each week, yet not feeling out of place. As much as I loved Star Trek: The Next Generation, the episodes on the holodeck, with the crew wearing costumes, felt out of place.

“Knock Knock” was a creepy, monster-driven episode of Doctor Who. The episode focused on Bill and her new roommates as they moved into a house that was more than it seemed. Capaldi fell to the background of his episode a bit, but that allowed Bill to shine as she interacted with people other than the Doctor.

Here are some other thoughts I had while watching “Knock Knock.”

Bit of Life

When Bill is moving into her new house she doesn’t really want the Doctor around her friends. She tells the Doctor that her home and her roommates are the bit of her life that the Doctor isn’t in. How often do we tell God the same thing? We tell God that he can have everything in our lives…except for this area and that area. We all have little bits of our lives that we don’t want to give to God. They could be relationships, sins or desires, but we all have those little bits that we want to hold onto. Jesus didn’t hold anything back when he went to the cross, though, so we shouldn’t hold anything back from him.

Scared

This was a scary episode of Doctor Who. Not “Blink” or the Silence scary, but still pretty scary. One of Bill’s roommates tells the Doctor that he’s scared; the Doctor tells him not to be scared because it doesn’t help. Fear is effective in situations where our fight or flight instincts need to kick in. If I saw a grizzly bear running at me, then my fear would be a good thing as it told me to try to get away. Independent of dangerous situations, though, fear doesn’t really help. Fear makes us worry about realities that may never even come to pass. God tells us not to fear, but to trust. Because even though we don’t know what’s coming in the future, we know the God who will be there with us.

Life

“Knock Knock” reminded us that there’s more to life than just sitting inside. There’s an entire world out there for us to experience. As nerds, we have probably lost count of all the days we spent inside playing video games, designing dungeons or reading comic books. We all need some of those days every so often, but they can’t compose the entirety of our schedules. When we were young it was healthy to go outside, play and get some exercise. Now we should go outside so that we can make a difference for God’s kingdom in this world. We can’t do much to expand God’s kingdom by sitting on our couches and binge watching Netflix. Life is more than what we experience inside the walls of our homes, because God gave us life so that we could share his love and truth.

“Knock Knock” was a solid episode of Doctor Who. It was good to be back on earth, but I’m happy that next week’s episode heads back to space. I have no idea what’s behind the door that the Doctor is guarding, but I didn’t watch “The Husbands of River Song,” which I feel might fill in some gaps.